Aralon: Sword and Shadow is an upcoming role-playing game from developer Galoobeth Games that’s going to hit the App Store this fall for the iPhone and iPad. It’s a 3D RPG that on the surface looks similar to Ravensword: The Fallen King, so it makes sense that they’ve enlisted Crescent Moon, the developer of Ravensword, to work on the art, optimize a few gameplay aspects, and publish the game. Aralon has been in the works for a year and a half now, a development cycle more on par with games found on consoles than on the iPhone. Why is it taking so long? Because Aralon is huge.

The kingdom of Aralon, bordered by the orc-infested Outlands, makes up the fantasy world you’ll explore in the game. It’s a land where humans, elves, and trolls live in a tenuous peace, while ferocious furry gnolls, green-skinned grawls, and other beastly creatures are always looking to feast on an unlucky person’s flesh. The game world is said to be an incredible 10 times as large as Ravensword’s, and it’s populated with flora, fauna, caves, waterways, palaces, and cities. Considering all the content, it’s not surprising that the game contains an estimated 30 hours of gameplay, with a long main storyline and a plentiful helping of sidequests.

You play as a main character whose race, class, and appearance you get to choose and customize. You can be a troll, elf, or human, and choose between warrior, mage, rogue, or ranger as your class. Each class is suitably different from the others, with the unique attributes and abilities you’d expect. But the customization doesn’t stop there. Currently there are 529 different items in the game, including tons of armor, weapons, and potions. You can also choose to align yourself with a faction, or guild, which unlocks new sidequests. If you’d rather go exploring, you can learn things like how to mix potions, gather herbs, pick locks, and wield two weapons simultaneously.

The combat in Aralon takes place in real time, so you’ll be hacking and slashing at enemies as they return the favor. A toolbar at the bottom of the screen contains buttons for the skills you’ve learned, and if your character can use magic, you’ll be able to throw some pyrotechnic assaults at your enemies. If the bad guys are giving you problems, you can even drop into a nearby tavern to hire a henchman who will help you in battle.

The images the developer shared with us are mostly of armor and clothing that will appear in the game. Click on the thumbnails to the right to see the full-sized assets. Most of the game’s artwork is being created by Mark Jones, who worked on the Elder Scrolls series, including Morrowind and Oblivion.

With so much content and so many customization options, it doesn’t sound like you’ll lack things to do in Aralon: Sword and Shadow. But with such a big game world and so many hours of quests and exploration, we’re hoping they manage to keep the game fresh and interesting from start to finish. In any case, this looks like one of the most promising and ambitious titles on our radar. We won’t know for sure if it will live up to our hopes until we get our hands on the game, but we’ll keep you posted as we hear more.

With recent high-quality releases like Magic Touch: Wizard for Hire and Gunbrick, developer Nitrome has been kicking butt lately. The studio is gearing up for one more iOS release: Silly Sausage in Meat Land, a puzzle / action game featuring a wiener dog whose body goes on for miles.

Overnight action phenomenon Mr Jump is burning up the App Store, but is noticeably absent from Google Play. That may change in the future. Gamezebo’s Jim Squires reached out to developer 1button to ask about the possibility of an Android release for the Mister, and the studio admitted an Android adaptation is probably forthcoming.

“We are not currently working on the Android version of Mr Jump, but we will probably have to do it soon. As we only work with native SDKs, it may take some time.”

The simple-looking yet hyper-challenging platformer Mr Jump has rocketed up the charts on the App Store, with 6 million downloads and counting. It’s a free game, with occasional ads and a few in-app purchase options. Touch Arcade spoke with the three-person team behind the app about their success, their inspiration, and where they’ll go from here.

“Most of our apps are puzzle games,” says Thomas. “With Mr Jump we wanted to show that we were capable of doing something different: more action oriented and ‘less simple’ graphically. But even if Mr Jump is a success it doesn’t mean we will stop making small and passionate puzzle games in the future. So our next game might be a puzzle game.”

Connect with us

Hot Videosfrom the past week

With recent high-quality releases like Magic Touch: Wizard for Hire and Gunbrick, developer Nitrome has been kicking butt lately. The studio is gearing up for one more iOS release: Silly Sausage in Meat Land, a puzzle / action game featuring a wiener dog whose body goes on for miles.

Do you like auto-running platformers? Do you like Ancient Egyptian art? If so, you’ll want to check out this cool-looking game. It kind of looks like the recent PlayStation 4 game Apotheon, but Egyptian rather than Greek, and auto-running rather than directly controlled. You can download it here for $1.99.

Silly Sausage in Meat Land is the latest game from Nitrome. This awesomely-named action game apparently plays like a mix between Retry and the old Nokia game Snake. Take a look at AppSpy’s video footage of the game, and keep an eye out for Silly Sausage’s release this week.

AppSpy’s review of Kiloo’s hack-and-slash adventure pegs it as a more casual take on the Infinity Blade franchise. There’s fewer things to collect, less ways to gear up, and you’ll ultimately hit the inevitable grind-or-pay wall that accompanies many free-to-play titles, but you’ll have a good time for an hour or so.